Love is for Saps
by SeasonVelvet
Summary: He was a boy, just a boy, when I was a very young girl. I made the discovery of love. All at once and much, much too completely. It was like you suddenly turned a blinding light on something that had always been half in shadow. Thats how it seemed to me.
1. Chapter 1

Well, this is my first Hey Arnold fanfiction. While hoping I did not butcher it, I am also thinking of what will happen, and where it will go. I have not thought so far. But, in the interim, enjoy this small, purposely salty (to keep you coming back for more) little quench for that Arnold/Helga thirst. Yes, that was weird. Just read it.

Love is for Saps

"_He was a boy, just a boy, when I was a very young girl. When I was sixteen, I made the discovery – love. All at once and much, much too completely. It was like you suddenly turned a blinding light on something that had always been half in shadow, that's how it struck the world for me. . ."_

The sun of an early spring day shone in through the window, touching with its light the classroom dust and debris, making commonness special as only sunshine can. The daylight flung itself over one student in particular, its rays illuminating and shadowing the form simultaneously. The sun which warmed one cheek made the other cooler in the shadow, and her elongated silhouette spread over the classroom floor, looking like the secret caricature of an alter ego. Her shoulders were hunched as two mountainous peaks, her torso conclave as an encompassing cave, her feet wound together under her chair as hidden vines. The attention of the sun, grazing her stony face, went unnoticed, and the bustle of the lively class, the noise a stark contrast to her stanch stillness, went unheard. Her full concentration was on the book in her hands.

"_. . . But then the searchlight which had been turned on the world was turned off again and never for one moment since has there been any light that's stronger than this – kitchen – candle . . ."_

_Oh, Blanche!_ She thought. _I know such a love! Such a love, so blinding, eclipsing, that no light can compare! Such a love, so musical, that no earthly song could possibly sound as beautiful! Such a love that should it be stopped, the light extinguished and the melody ended, I should live forever as a hollow mockery of the human condition, my heart ripped from my chest, beating and bleeding until the last of my breaths . . . Ahohohoh!_

A paper airplane sailed over the heads of her peers and collided with the side of her head. Its tip crinkled on impact with her cranium and it fell to the floor. "Hey watch it, buddy!" She yelled.

"You watch it!" Came the idiotically boastful voice, always too loud and obnoxious. The congregation of snickering fools around him looked from her to him with excited anticipation.

She sighed again, but this time in weariness and irritation. Harold, he never learned. The big oaf, the big buffoon.

She looked with disdain at his pink, baby-butt face, all hot and bothered as it always was, with a perpetual look of stupidity about the wrinkled forehead and downturned lips.

"Harold," She began in a controlled voice, full of faux amiability. "You don't really want to make me mad, do you?" Her eyes were wide with innocence, though all the while she was stretching her fingers, making and unmaking a fist. Harold's eyes went quickly from her face, the tension of menacing niceness, to her hands, working and preparing to punch him in, and back again. He swallowed, panicking with dazed anxiety and confusion, trying to hide his fear from the expectant gazes of his friends.

"You know how I hate to get mad." Clenching, releasing, clenching, releasing. "And I know _you_ know what happens when I get mad." He stared at the hard set of her mouth, watching the threatening words form. "So why don't you just sit down there, okay Harold? Just sit down there and be a _good_ boy." Clenching, releasing, clenching, releasing.

He seemed like a ticking time bomb, about to explode – before all the tension suddenly went away.

"Okay, Helga," he said, and sat down.

_Moron_.

She heard the nasally voices of Sid and Stinky argue with incredulous disbelief at Harold's actions with smug indulgence before tuning them out returning to her book.

"_You need somebody. And I need somebody, too. Could it be – you and me, Blanche? . . ."_

Someone cleared their throat beside her, and she glanced over to see a torso. _Oh, for the love of pork rinds!_

Wait. Red quilt. _Arnold!_

The noise of the classroom increased tenfold to her sensitive ears, and the scent of vanilla cookies wafting in through the window hit her senses like a stunning, dreamy cloud. Every fiber of her being seemed to hum -- the strands of her hair springing into attention -- the moisture of her mouth drying up -- the tingling sensation of excitement running up her back . . .

She choked it all down. Her nose remained in the book, her eyes gazing down on the page in pretend concentration, fingers tapping in pretend agitation. "What do you want, _**Arnaldo?**_ Can't you plague some other poor sap with your annoying presence?"

She could feel him scowl; hear it in his clipped and tired voice. He must have heard her converse with Harold, too. _Why must I be so cruel to my beloved?_ _Oh Arnold, if only I could --_

Offering methodically, "I just came over to see if you're still coming over to work on our project after school." He stood easily, looking at her with that blank, patient expression of his.

Her mood darkened. _**Arnold**_. "Yeah, I'm coming. What, d'you think I'd forget? Afterschool, 4:00, bring a snack and a _**noose **_to hang yourself with."

He sighed. "You know Helga, you don't need to be so mean about things all the –

"Oh, spare me!" Her head shot up, a petulant expression on her face as she glared at him.

Their eyes locked for a moment in angry standing, glaring at each other with more than _today_ behind their eyes. There was an almost pitying (perhaps regretful?) look in Arnolds, which sent Helga over the edge. She was practically shacking with rage as Arnold shook his head and turned away, walking back to his seat.

To say the least, their _relationship_ had been on the decline ever since . . . well, ever since . . . well, ever . . . since . . .

She hunched in on herself once more and scowled into her book. _Don't dare to hope, Blanche. Hope is a joke. And love?_

_Love is for saps._


	2. Siren Song

Second chapter -- yes, it took much time to complete. Or, to put it another way, much time to get around to completing. It is rather short as well, but it seemed to me to be a fine time for it to end and another chapter to begin. That, and this is all I have written. Read on.

* * *

She twisted to peer at the large school clock, with its token thick black rims and yellowed innards, craning her neck and cracking her back as she did so.

A boy behind her looked up.

"What?" She demanded.

He looked back down.

She swiveled back in her seat to face the front with a huff, the time having slipped from her mind. It was only a formality, the classic "look at clock" move to disrupt and express boredom. She had not looked long enough to actually absorb the time. Class would end eventually. _Eventually, ha! Criminy, what's the matter with this time dealio? Speeds up when you're having fun, slows down when you're bored out of your mind! I tell ya, if I were in charge, I would set this time thing straight._

She scowled, staring at her blank paper, the expression coming easily despite the lack of provocation. The classroom was silent, save for the occasional cough or sniffle. The silence stuffed itself into every crevice and corner of the white, black, and green room, creating an atmosphere of perfect analytical numbness. The white silence radiated into her ears and eyes, making her paper too bright, and the silence too loud. Her back began to ache again, in spite of the momentary clock reprieve, from maintaining an uncomfortably still position. She wanted to close her eyes and rest on the table top, but maintained composure and remained in stock-still, straight-backed weariness.

She succumbed to temptation and looked back up at the clock, focusing this time on the hands, their positions, and their relative significances. 11:40. _Twenty minutes to lunch. Could be worse_.

(Twenty minutes to see Arnold)

She reflected on the nature of their relationship, her head resting in her hand. _Arnold_. She replayed their interaction this morning like a reel on the blank backdrop of her mind; always blank before Arnold. She thought back over the last few years, imaginary fingers of memory motoring through a rolodex of experiences. Her mind filled with Arnold, inspiration sounding from the whirr of her loves index cards . . . texts and subtexts of their love, harsh realities and smooth fantasies of her girlhoods days, revelations of lights and secrecies of shadows, the pulls of her wants and pushes of her fears –

She stopped. Eye brow raised expertly, she spied her surroundings with nonchalant, feign innocent eyes. Mr. Hayka was sitting languidly with his feet crossed on his desk, engrossed in a journal of some sort, while the students were either bent over, scribbling, staring blankly into space, or sprawled over mused papers in open mouthed snoozing. _Dweebs_.

Taking once last shifty glance from side to side, she slowly unveiled from beneath the wing of her science textbook a rather curious, petite pink book. So abnormal was such a sight, the juxtaposition of that lovely pink book in the allegedly monstrous hand of Helga G. Pataki, that should it be so much as glimpsed by any other mortal eyes, it would tear a hole in the time-space continuum and bring about the end of the world itself!

So you can understand the delicacy here.

Reassured of her privacy, pink book in hand, she allowed again for the whirr to sound; for her tune to play. Memories, thoughts, and feelings began again to _flash _and to _sparkle!_ _Resounding! Booming! Ringing! __**Singing!**_ Flowing _through_ and _out_ her _senses!_ _Traveling_ down to her fingers; _tingling_ her very _hair_ follicles! _Shining_ outwards as love's moonbeams to _cool the warmth of the day's __**sun! . . .**_

Her lips parted and a quick gasp was involuntarily sucked in. The pencil was put to paper, and she was gone . . .

Showered affections from divinity,  
Grace blue tinged petals – the blood crimson rose.  
Bud, blossom, fade – but not give up the ghost,  
Of volcanic soil, twisters' conception,  
Thorns to make the entire confection.  
Such blossom, thought to be anomalous,  
Gives birth to the children of Daedalus,  
And to caress the bloom, find from the dark,  
Is the lustrous flame of obliquity . . .

Her eyes fluttered closed and she smiled softly, goofily, as one does in moments when the heart irrationally swells, filling one with a suffocating happiness, too much, too much, but just for a moment, in an otherwise gray and gloomy existence.

_**RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!!!**_

The cry of the fire alarm pierced the alcove of her poetic rapture, like an embryonic sac of languid harmony aborted to cease the further development of her fetal ode. She jolted, started out of her wits, practically astounded right out of her body. Her jostled papers cascaded around her, mimicking the chaos of the classroom.

The elevated and buzzing voices of her classmates infiltrated her ears, as if the fire alarm had been the launch of a surprise party, and they were the cake: a thin layer of fear topped with gobs of thrill – and a little cherry of uniqueness to crown.

"Helga!"

She still sat at her desk, searching frantically for her little pink book, her hands working through the mess as if they were fluffing torn pillows, her papers flying about like loosed feathers. _Where__ could it __be__!? _Her heart beat with a dull panic. She was aware of movement around her, of her classmates exiting the classroom, of the entire school leaving. She felt pointedly the anxiety of dwindling time, the anxiety of an unfulfilled need, a task undone – and the bell jar descending.

"Helga!"

Her head jerked up, her arms suspended in mid air with her hands clutching various papers. She had a deer-in-headlights expression, yet instead of surprise there was a sad awareness, and her mouth was slightly open. Such looks of truth are always too subtle to be noticed, and moments too passing to be truly reflected upon.

"Helga, it's time to go now! We must go now!" The yell from Mr. Hayka came thinly to her over the droning background noise.

"But . . . ," She responded weakly, knowing he could not hear her, seeing a look in his darting eyes that would not understand her. He beckoned to her with a movement of his arm, _Make Haste!_, it said, and with one last ditch effort, one last sorrowful and longing glance behind her, she rose and followed the herd.


End file.
